Fedora Commons Overview and Background

Sandy Payette, Executive Director

UK Fedora TrainingLondon

January 22-23, 2009

Social and Technical Forces Waves of Repository-Enabled Applications

• Institutional Repo and Digital Library Apps• IR: Scholars to deposit articles, etc.• DL: Digital library search and access; collections

• Collaborative “Web 2.0”• collaborative filtering• annotate; discuss scholarly materials

• E-Science, E-Research, Data Curation• Publications linked to data• Data aggregation from distributed sources• Use of “Live” archives

Implications for Repositories

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Emergence of Infrastructure

Source: Understanding Infrastructure: Lessons for New Scientific Infrastructure, http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/handle/2027.42/49353

Systems

Integrate componentsCentral controlDedicated/specialized gatewaysMore closedMore preconceived

Integrate systemsDistributed controlGeneric gatewaysMore openMore reconfigurable

Networks

Considerations for repositories….

• Single vs. multi-institutional perspective?• Web fit?• Impact of “cloud” and virtualization technologies?• Best path to real interoperability?• Complexity vs. simplicity?• Positioning in emerging value networks?

Contexts - user and technical

User Contexts Technical Contexts

Implications of Technology Trends

• Web 2.0 – suggests shift in paradigm that will affect students, scholars, scientists,

educators– Collaborative classification (e.g., flickr– The power of collective intelligence (amazon)– Alternative trust models (reputation like in ebay and in the open

source software movement)• Cloud Computing

– Hosting of large scale, low-cost storage (e.g., Amazon S3, Google)– Hosting of services and applications

• Service orientation – movement towards “lightweight”• Semantic Web – linked data vision; but for now practical,

constrained uses of semantic technologies

Goals for Fedora Repositories …

1. Objects: Support the creation and management of new forms of any type of content as “information units” permitting both aggregation and linkings

2. Relationships: Knowledge integration: capturing semantic and factual relationships among information units (networks/graphs)

3. Re-Use: Promote information re-use and contextualization

4. Embed: Accommodate information that is created as a byproduct of collaborative activity and fit repositories within end user processes

1. Integration: Integrate with the Web and enterprise systems that support research, collaboration, and scholarly communication

1. Durability: Enable durability and long-term preservation and access to information resources

The Organization

www.fedora-commons.org

Fedora Commons501(c)(3) Non-Profit

Purpose Statement from Articles of Incorporation

The purpose of Fedora Commons is to provide sustainable technologies to help individuals and organizations create, manage, publish, share, and preserve digital resources upon which we form our intellectual, scientific, and cultural heritage;

… provide open-source software that integrates key functionality for supporting the full lifecycle of digital information;

… enable access over the World Wide Web and other delivery systems.

-Supporting universities and research institutions-Supporting libraries, museums, and cultural institutions-Supporting educational institutions-Supporting open access publishing-Supporting archives and records management organizations

A Brief History…

2001 2005 2007

MajorFunders

Mellon Mellon Moore

Mellon

Community,Partners,Donors

2012+

501(c)(3)Non-profit

Users of Fedora Commons open source software

http://fedora.info/wiki/index.php/Fedora_Commons_Community_Registry

• National Libraries and Archives• University Libraries and Archives• Research Institutions• Museums and Culture Organizations• Semantic and Virtual Digital Libraries• National Repository Consortia• Publishing and Professional Societies• Medical Centers and Libraries• Government Agencies

Fedora Commons Open Source Projects

• Fedora Repository Project• The original Fedora Project

• Akubra Storage Project• New storage plug-in architecture; transactional file system;

• Mulgara and Topaz Semantic Technologies Projects • Currently independent, but FC supported • Mulgara - highly scalable triple store• Topaz – object-to-triple mapping to enable application development

Fedora Commons open source projects can be integrated together.

Strategic Directions …

Open Source Community Collaboration

Strategic Partnerships

Working Together with Target Communities…

preservationand

archiving

data curation

open accesspublication

FC – 2009EmergingCommunitySolutionAreas

integrations

scholar’srepository

Working Together with Solution Communities…

Solution Community Startups (talk to Thorny Staples)

Developer Forum: new collaboration space !

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